Last month (15 May) we confirmed the first three local authority sites where we will pilot our new approach to local authority assessments, (Birmingham City Council, Lincolnshire County Council and Nottingham City Council).
We have now confirmed a further two local authorities for piloting our local authority assessment approach this summer. They are Suffolk County Council and North Lincolnshire Council.
The following five local authorities will now be piloted:
- Birmingham City Council
- Lincolnshire County Council
- North Lincolnshire Council
- Nottingham City Council
- Suffolk County Council
The pilots are a key activity to ensure that our approach to local authority assessments is as meaningful and effective as possible. This follows last year’s test and learn activities across two local authority areas - Manchester City Council and Hampshire County Council, which tested aspects of our full assessment approach.
We will use our new single assessment framework when assessing the five local authority sites during the pilots, following our draft local authority assessment framework.
We will also be undertaking case tracking as part of the pilots. This involves retrospectively following the pathway of a small number of people’s cases to gather evidence for the assessment. A small team led by Amanda Stride, Deputy Director of Local Authority Assessment Delivery, has been appointed to undertake the pilots.
For each local authority in the pilot, we will provide a report and indicative scores for all the quality statements and an overall rating. These are not formal ratings – they are indicative ratings that are determined through piloting. We will work with the LGA, ADASS and the pilot sites to agree the best way of making this clear.
We will incorporate any learnings into our formal assessments which will start later in 2023.
Alongside the pilots we are also reviewing data and published documentary evidence across all 153 local authorities, focusing on themes in these 2 quality statements:
- Care provision, integration and continuity
- Assessing needs
We will not publish this data and evidence at individual local authority level. We will instead use our independent voice to publish it at an overall national level as a collection of evidence. For example, in our annual statutory State of Care report to Parliament.